Queen (128 page)

    life she had tried to fit in with what other people expected her to be,

    but no one had ever asked her what she wanted. No one had ever asked her

    if she was happy.

    And then she realized that wasn't true. One man had asked her that

    question.

"I loves you with all my heart,'" Alec said.

And she began to get better.

"She be pleased to see you," Alec said to Simon, as they pulled up outside

the institution. "She be better now you home. "

    It was the perfect opportunity for Simon to tell his father of his plans,

    but he could not do it until he had seen his mother. He looked at the

    ugly building where his mother was incarcerated, and shivered slightly,

    but his father would not take him inside.

    "'Tain't fittin'," he said. "'Tain't a good thing fo' a young man to see.

    "

782 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    He arranged to have Queen meet her son in the garden. Simon waited

    patiently under a tree, and tried to avoid looking at the few inmates who

    were allowed outside to exercise. Their clothes were filthy, and their hair

    matted, and one of them talked soundlessly to someone only she could see,

    and another called on Jesus to deliver her. Simon felt pity for them, but

    could not imagine his mother in the company of these unfortunate souls.

    He saw Alec leading Queen to him. Her appearance shocked him, for she

    seemed so old and frail, and so unlike her old self in this dull garb. He

    wanted to snatch her up, and take her away from here, and never let her out

    of his sight, and protect her always. He moved quickly to her, and when she

    saw him, her eyes lighted up with joy, and she was, for a moment, herself

    again.

"Oh, Ma," Simon cried.

    She hugged him hard, held on to him, and moaned a little with the love of

    him. Then she told him her secret.

"I ain't mad," she said.

    Alec went and talked to the doctors, to discover Queen's progress, and to

    give her the chance to talk to her son. Queen and Simon walked together in

    the pretty garden, and he told her things that he thought might make her

    happy, silly, trivial things, and made her smile, and laugh. Then,

    carefully, he told her of his plans.

    He was going back to A & T, just for one semester. He had money saved from

    his summer job, and he would not have to do any part-time work to sustain

    himself. He could devote all his time and attention and energy to his

    studies. He believed he would get good grades, and wanted to prove to

    himself that he could. Just for one semester. Then he could come home to

    the farm, but he could not come back in failure.

    It was better than the best Christmas she could remember. It was what she

    wanted to hear from him, needed to hear from him, and it made her heart

    sing.

    "You can do it," she said, her eyes shining with pride. "It was meant to

    be."

    There was something else to tell her. He wasn't sure if now was the moment,

    but she was his ma, and she deserved to know. Just as Bertha had deserved

    to know the truth about

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 783

Queen's condition, and he had told her, and she had responded with care,

and affection, and concern. He had been very wrong to doubt that she

would.

"I've met a girl, Ma," he said,

    For a moment, he thought he'd done the wrong thing. Queen's eyes

    narrowed.

    "And what's her name?" Queen demanded. "What she call herself, this girl

    who's stealing my baby away from me?"

"Bertha," Simon said meekly. "Bertha Palmer."

    Queen was silent, staring away from him, at something in the distance.

    Then Simon realized something odd. She was laughing. She turned to him,

    and she was laughing.

"Not my baby?" she said, "Not my little baby boy?"

He laughed with her. "Quite a big boy now, Ma," he said.

    It wasn't so hard for Queen to let Simon go. She'd had to let go of

    Abner, and that had pained her, but she had learned from it. And Abner

    had not tied to her; he still loved her, and was more attentive to her

    now, from far away, than ever he had been when he was home. So she let

    go of Simon, and all she prayed for was that he be happy. Because now she

    understood a simple truth. There was one man who loved her more than

    anyone else in the world, and to expect more love than that from life is

    simple greed.

    Simon visited her every day for the week he was in Savannah, and on the

    last day when he went to say good-bye, she hugged him and wished him

    Godspeed and good luck.

He went back to Greensboro, and settled to his studies. He wrote to Bertha

regularly, and gave the good news of his progress, and of his excellent

grades. Then one day he was summoned to the president's office. It made

him nervous, because he could not imagine what he had done wrong.

    But the president was fulsome in praise of his work, and gave him some

    extraordinary news. A certain Mr. Boyce had written to ask the cost of

    one full year's tuition, and then sent a check. It covered everything:

    tuition, dormitory, meals, and books. Simon was speechless. Why had

    someone he didn't know done this extraordinary thing? He hardly heard

    what the president said after that, because all the dark clouds had

    lifted from his horizon, and in his future he saw nothing but unbounded

    joy.

784 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    When he left the president's office, he walked across the lawn trying to

    work out who his benefactor was.

    Then the penny-or rather, the five dollars-dropped, and he remembered a

    courtly, elderly man on a train, whose wife couldn't sleep.

    He let out a whoop of exultation that shocked the students near him, and

    leaped several feet into the air.

At about the same time, Alec drove his buggy to the institution to bring

Queen home. A nurse escorted her from the forbidding building and

delivered her to her husband. Alec put his arms around her, and hugged her

hard, then helped her into the buggy. They didn't speak very much on the

journey home, because they never spoke very much about the things that

were important.

    It was a hot and dusty day, and when they got to the shack all was quiet.

    Queen stared at the little house, loving it, loving being home.

    "Dunno where's the family," Alec wondered. "They said they'd be here, to

    meet you."

But Queen shook her head.

"It don't matter," she said. "This is all I need."

    He helped her down, and held her arm, and took her into the quiet house.

    Inside, as if from nowhere, there was a burst of color, and noise, and

    people. Streamers flew around her, and all her family were there to

    welcome her. Minnie and Julie with their husbands and children, and

    Freeland with his wife and sons. George was there, with his family, and

    Abner, who had tired of city life, and had come home for good.

    Queen stood among them all, surrounded by their love, and could not keep

    from crying.

    That night she sat with Alec on the porch, rocking in their chairs, and

    puffing on their pipes, as if she had never been away. They laughed about

    the day, and gossiped about the family, and Queen thanked him for all he

    had done for her.

... Tain't nuttin'," he said.

    But it was something, she wanted to tell him, it was something of

    enormous importance to her, but she did not know how to say it. She

    realized something that shocked her. In all their years together, she had

    never actually told him how much

    A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 785

she loved him. She had always assumed that he knew, but it was thoughtless

to make such an assumption. She sought for a way to tell him what was in

her heart, and an odd memory burst into her mind.

    "Years ago," she said, "when I was a little girl, I lived in the big

    house, my pappy's house, with my half brother William. We slept in the

    same room, only he had a big four-poster, and I had a pallet at the foot

    of his bed. We'd lie in bed and dream of our futures."

She was lost in memory.

    "I always said that I was going to marry a prince on a white horse, and

    William would laugh at me. 'Who's going to marry an itty-bitty slave girl

    like you, QueenT he'd say."

    She looked at Alec, and saw his gray hair, and knew that her own was at

    least as gray, and her face lined, and her figure full, and that they had

    grown old together. But that didn't matter, because in his company she

    was a girl again, dreaming of the man she would marry, and he was a young

    ferryman, who was kind to her.

    "He shouldn't have laughed, because he was wrong. The only thing is, how

    could I possibly have known that when I did find my prince, he wouldn't

    be on a white horse. He'd be riding on a ferryboat, across a mighty

    river."

    Alec nodded gently. They sat together in silence, puffing on their pipes

    and rocking in their chairs. Then he put out his hand to her. She reached

    to him, and put her hand in his, and he grasped it hard, and when he

    spoke, his voice was gruff with love.

"That's all right, then," he said.

    92

Simon graduated from A & T College, and when World War I came, he enlisted

in the U. S. Army. He was sent to France, where, in the Argonne Forest,

shortly before the end of the war, he was gassed. After treatment in a

hospital overseas, he was returned home and mustered out of the army.

    He received his master's degree at Cornell University, and went on to have

    an outstanding career as Dean of Agriculture at AM & N College, in

    Arkansas.

    He married Bertha Palmer, and they had three sons. After Bertha's death,

    Simon was married again, to Zeona Hatcher, and they had a daughter.

The grandchildren of Queen Haley by her son Simon were:

George, who became a lawyer.

Julius, who became an architect.

Lois, who taught music.

And Alex Haley, who became a writer.

786

    Afterword

Alex was often asked how much of Roots was fact and how much fiction. I

have been asked the same question, and my answer is similar to his,

although less emphatic.

    Most of the lineage statements in this book can be documented, except the

    most critical one. I do not have in my possession written evidence that

    James Jackson, Jr., fathered Queen, and I think it is unlikely that such

    evidence exists. Queen believed it. Alex believed it. It was accepted,

    in my presence, by several of the white descendants of the Jackson

    family. Alex was welcomed by them as a cousin, and several of them

    journeyed from Alabama to his farm in Tennessee to give him a memento of

    The Forks of Cypress, and to welcome him, officially, into the family.

    There is a major genealogical error, however, concerning the Jackson

    family, and to them I apologize. In all my discussions with Alex, my

    concern was for Queen and her direct lineage, and the early research

    provided to me suggested that James Jackson, Jr. ("Jass"), was the

    firstborn son of James and Sally Jackson. After Alex's death, when I

    began work on the book, I uncovered later research that documented the

    birth of an earlier son, Andrew Jackson Jackson ("A.J."). Obviously, Alex

    was aware of this, but none of his notes for the novel gave me any

    indication of how he intended to incorporate A.J: into the story. In

    trying to find a path through the clutter of this nineteenth-century

    family, and because A.J. hardly affected Queen's life, I have invented

    an untimely death for him. In fact, he lived to a good age.

    Beyond that, almost all the people are where they should be almost all

    the time, although I have given a couple more years of life to Pocahontas

    Perkins than she actually enjoyed, and her daughter, Lizzie, is bom a tad

    earlier than in life.

    787

788 AFTERWORD

Uncle Henry in Ireland and Uncle Hugh in Philadelphia have been combined

into one character.

    I doubt that young James was ever called Jass, but as he, his father, and

    his grandfather were all called James Jackson, I thought some clarifying

    nickname was necessary.

    I have also been asked how much of the book was written by Alex and how

    much by me, and I find this impossible to quantify. I have a

    seven-hundred-page outline provided by Alex, boxes and boxes of his

    research are available to me, and some finished pages for the book, but

    my major resource was Alex himself. His head was full of the stories that

    constitute this work, and I spent two of the happiest and most informa-